The Psychology of Walking Underwater
by featherback
Summary: "Perhaps... what disturbs me the most is just that: the thought that he might not have come back. That this is a cruel joke fate wishes to play and he never planned to return at midnight on the doorstep, bleary-eyed with only his name and my face in his mind." A post-Reichenbach AU!
1. Part One

**This is terribly unedited, and the idea has perhaps been done hundreds of times, but I hope you might enjoy it nonetheless. C: As far as chapters go, it'll probably only have a few, being a sort of mini story and all. Thank you for reading! Sherlock belongs to BBC, ACD, etc.**

"This is yours...right?"

Pausing, I glance up from slicing a loaf of french bread on the kitchen table, recently cleared of all its assorted chemistry equipment and miscellaneous test tubes. He's gazing at me from across the living room, one hand perched uncertainly on the keyboard of my partially open laptop. A pale, long finger brushes against the T with a tremble, like that particular letter holds some sort of indistinct, unfamiliar meaning from long ago.

I set the knife down. I've assured him of this twice today already, but I decide against reminding him.

"Yes, it's mine," I confirm. "Yours is upstairs."

He nods, but not at me, and attempts a small smile meant to reassure. For some reason I feel dismayed instead. He moves away from the computer on the cluttered desk over to the window.

I watch him with a careful eye as I pick up the knife and return to dividing the loaf into equal sections. There is something vague about the way he walks, all basic movement and no actual vigor. Like he's trying to climb out of a dream state, his mind nowhere near his actual physical head.

"And this...is this mine?"

I flick my gaze over to where he's pointing on the mantelpiece.

"Yes, that's yours too," I say, indicating the skull.

"Oh."

He stares at it with intensity for a moment, dark brows drawn together in a furrow, lips moving subtly in an inaudible murmur. Then he steps away and scales the coffee table with no apparent effort or concern just like he used to. Papers scatter and an empty mug hits the floor with a soft thunk.

He takes a seat on the couch, apparently satisfied at something I am not aware of, and I go back to making dinner, glad I actually have room to do so for once, unencumbered by abstruse experiments.

Wait. I glance at my hands with tightened lips. No, I shouldn't relish in the lack of mysterious stains or severed body parts lying out in the open. This tidiness in the kitchen is not normal. Not his normal anyways. The table is clear and the kitchen clean for all the wrong reasons.

"John?"

I continue cutting bread, wrapped in my own thoughts and deaf to his voice.

"John?"

It takes me a few seconds to respond, so unused have I been these past three years to hearing him speak. The name sounds alien coming from him. He turns towards me with a bemused and distracted expression. If his crooked frown is any indication he is not pleased either with the way my name must have tasted: foreign, an anomaly, a word he wasn't accustomed to.

Our eyes meet. I study his puzzled appearance. He looks... small: sitting there nestled up in a new blue dressing gown, knees gathered to his chin, his lanky six foot frame reduced to a tangle of huddled limbs and hunched shoulders. There is something off about him. A sentiment not present or too obvious in his face, or a note in his voice which makes me want to be hesitant around him. I ignore it and look away. This aura or feeling has been present since he returned, and if I payed attention to it all the time I'd waste away in aimless skepticisms and painful reveries.

"Yes?" I ask.

"Did you miss me?"

The knife slips. Blood begins to seep from a cut on my index finger, welling up and dropping in a single bead to soak into the bread. It's only minor, and I've experienced and seen much, much worse, But it feels like I lost the finger, or maybe that's just the after effect of his question hitting me like a blow to the jugular.

I let out a quiet curse and gingerly put the knife down so I can focus on him. His visage is still unchanged except for a small fragment of unease which managed its way in there, somewhere along the creases at the corners of his eyes or in the tightening of his mouth.

"Are you alright?" he asks, seeing the blood. He makes as if he's going to get up but I wave him away in a languid fashion.

"No," I lie conversationally, "it's fine." My head seems to have gone blank. "What do you mean, did you miss me?"

Unable to see through the falsehood (or perhaps he just doesn't want to ask about it further, I still don't know what he sees and doesn't see), he sits back and tilts his head upwards to stare at the ceiling. His palms fold together, then as if deciding that's uncomfortable, he crosses his arms against his chest.

When he speaks it's with his same eloquence. But his question carries the strange, adolescent reasoning of a child. One who ambles on curiously about a random thought, who doesn't really want the answer but decides to bring it up anyways.

"Did you miss me?" he repeats. He's scrutinizing the bullet holes in the wallpaper now. "It seems like someone had to, after three years. Isn't that the standard social convention? Humans are supposed to miss others after a prolonged absence from their company. Was I the kind of person to be missed?"

He is regarding me carefully, absentmindedly investigating one of the scorch marks on the wall with a fingertip. Waiting for me to say something. Anything. After two minutes pass in which I unsuccessfully search for words or at least a reply that would make sense, I realize he isn't going to say anything until I answer him first. Still stubborn.

"Of course you were missed," I tell him, coming around the kitchen table into the other room.

"That doesn't answer the entire question."

"I don't know."

"Yes," he says in a whisper. "You do."

I did.

The things I could say to lie to him catch in my throat: yes, you were complacent and devoted to others' emotional plights, you were grieved over by everyone, you were a normal and pleasant member of society, a person favorable among the population.

False. False. False, false.

It hurts to think these things even though they are honest, because they're also cruel.

However, as he continues to stare at me I get the feeling he's urging me to lie to him, reassure him otherwise. Why? Did he consider himself along those aforementioned lines? Had he already confirmed that he stood in a different light? I find myself shaking my head. A while back I promised myself I would always tell him the truth, regardless of what he asked.

"No," I say quietly. "Not from the viewpoint of the average person."

"But you," he presses. "You missed me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

He sits up, tucking his feet underneath him. I take a step back, suddenly re-aware of the blood trickling down my palm. I press a thumb against the cut to staunch the feeble flow.

"What do you mean?"

"Why did you miss me?"

"I don't-"

"Why?"

"Sherlock-"

"Why?"

If I didn't know better I would have said he was trying to antagonize me. Yet these days he doesn't antagonize anyone on purpose, and besides, I can hear the hunger in his voice. It's an itch, a pang of yearning to know, to distinguish where he now fits, reborn in a world that has forgotten him.

I look at him, urgent and waiting, and bite my tongue. "Why do you need to know?"

He glances at his hands, rubs his palms together thoughtfully.

"I have no idea," he says slowly. Again the child unaware of what he is really saying. "It just feels...important. It nags at me. Perhaps I wanted someone to miss me, and you most of all, though I'm completely oblivious as to why."

I open my mouth. Abruptly close it again. Swallow thickly. Once more I find myself at a lack of words. I shift away to the sink and turn on the faucet and hold the cut beneath it, seemingly mesmerized by the thin stream of red and water swirling down the drain.

"John?"

The cut burns.

"You're avoiding the question."

My head burns.

"John...?" he says softly.

With a quick flick of my wrist I switch the faucet on full blast. The rush of the water reverberates loudly across the flat, covering up my struggle to breathe.

It's been two weeks since he's come back. Two weeks, and I still panic each time I hear his steps clattering up and down the stairs, his voice coming from the kitchen, or catch sight of his coat and scarf returned to the coat rack. I'm not entirely sure why. But my arms grow numb and my lungs constrict and it becomes difficult to force a coherent thought other than alarm or confusion. Maybe it's because each time I encounter him part of me thinks I've come upon a ghost - some phantom hallucination come back to taunt me from that other obscure world where the dead pass into. Each time I have to remind myself he's real, that my mind is not betraying me. The nightmares came to an end a long time ago, anyways, exhausted from repetition night after night. A man can only meet his demons so many times.

If he notices my abnormal behavior he doesn't say so. Then again, it's probably not unusual for him, as he doesn't remember. (Wondering what he must think of me sometimes makes me chuckle; other times, it makes me afraid).

My general twitchy-ness is not the only new thing. The flat is clean, for one. It remained untouched for three whole years, a cluttered tomb I shuffled through each day. I fell prey to the misconjecture that perhaps bits of him would remain in the mess, the test tubes arranged in neat little rows, the dust on the curtains, the yellow face on the wall. Only last month did Mrs. Hudson beg me to tidy up. I did so with partial unwillingness, caught somewhere between the oddest sense of betrayal, and facing the inevitable ending of something I was not yet ready to come to terms with.

I didn't throw anything away. I shoved it all in his room, shutting it selfishly up like in a little box, things for another day, things to look upon again when I re-discovered the soldier in me and found the courage.

The smiley face stayed. So did the wallpaper, so I could imagine with my faulty, idiotic, little critical heart that I still smelled fresh gunpowder when I walked by.

There is food in the kitchen now. That's another new thing. Like others, it is oddly wanted and disliked for its strange mixture of normality and the atypical. It still doesn't fit the definition of well stocked but we have enough to go by. None of it is tainted with the limbs or eyes or fingers of humans from the morgue. Heads don't spontaneously appear on the middle shelf in the fridge. If I'm honest with myself, I don't miss unearthing ears in the kettle. But I miss the idea of it.

He is, of course, the newest thing of all.

New in a sense. Same body, same soul, just...different.

For instance, some of his mannerisms and conventions are not the same, like how he constantly has to make sure certain things are his. The laptop. The skull. It isn't possessiveness, it's a strange, desperate kind of craving borne out of I don't know what. It's like he doesn't want anything that once belonged to him to be taken away again. He has to know what is what, so he can guard it carefully.

Once, when hanging up my coat on the rack, my hand accidentally brushed against his black wool one. I received a glare so astringent I immediately jerked my hand away.

This isn't the only way he deviates from the man I once knew. He no longer wears sleek two button suits, but jeans and t-shirts - supposedly he's comfortable enough in them but he looks so out of place. A lanky refugee in baggy hand-me-downs, even though all the clothes are newly purchased.

The violin doesn't carry the fascination it once did for him. He still plucks at it occasionally with slow, tentative fingers, as if perplexed by how they move among the notes of their own accord. He can't use his bow. Two years and seven months ago I snapped it in two.

His appetite hasn't improved either. At least he actually eats little bits of whatever he fancies or drinks a cup of tea now when his stomach growls, instead of ignoring the hunger sounds until he feels faint.

He doesn't shoot, or appear to be familiar with a gun. He tries to make jokes. He still doesn't talk for the majority of the time, but when he does, it's as if he actually wants to hear what the other person has to say.

When I see these things and so many others, the pieces and scraps of everyday life no one else would notice, I am reminded. When he does something offhandedly and it brings out a smile in me, or says something which makes me chuckle, I am at my loneliest. Because then I am struck with nostalgia, and I recall for the thousandth time he's not the same man.

It's strange. How much of him returned? How much is left out there, drifting inside white dandelion seed wishes on the wind?

No. I should not be greedy, or critical, or petulant. So what if he's not the same? People change. Who knows what he experienced the past three years? I am no judge. I should be overjoyed he's alive, and I am, I so am.

But sometimes I can't help think he never came back at all.

Does that make me terrible?

Perhaps...what disturbs me the most is just that: the thought that he might not have come back. That this is a cruel joke fate wishes to play and he never planned to return at midnight on the doorstep, bleary eyed with only his name and my face in his mind. Losing his memory could be the only catalyst that goaded him into following what little imprints of 221B that remained in his head back to Baker Street. Otherwise, he would have kept away for the rest of his life, indefinitely, the reason for which I don't think I'll ever guess at.

Perhaps he knocked himself out in a successful effort to erase everything because he didn't want to recall what he'd done to me, to everyone else, in faking his death (the reasons for this, too, I still don't know as he can't tell me).

I dismiss this thought immediately, guilty. Whatever he is, then or now, he's never been a coward.

And perhaps, lastly, someone else could have done this to him on purpose. I consider the rest of Moriarty's criminal empire still out there, building itself back up in the shadows, spider children repairing the web, escaped from the sac without their leader. It's possible. Very possible.

Until he regains these memories, however, we'll never understand what really happened. I can only speculate, and poorly at best.

Sometimes, I think speculating will kill me.


	2. Part Two

He came back on a Saturday, fifteen days ago. Remembering for him may be hard, but for me the recollections come all too easy.

_I'm alone in the flat, perched in my armchair by the window, a book held loosely in my hands. My eyes browse the page listlessly, not really taking in the information. All is quiet. It's a peaceful sort of silence, the kind of silence I hate. The room feels emptier than usual. The only sound in the background is the monotonous ticking of the clock on the wall: tick, tock, tick, tock._

I sigh, inhaling the stuffy air. This book isn't interesting. I'm not sure why I bothered picking it up in the first place. Perhaps because I promised myself a few days ago I'd actually take time to read at least one or two of the books cluttered on the shelf in the living room. They've been neglected over the past months, collecting dust, unopened and unloved.

Tugging at the hem of my jumper, I glance up at the clock, then back down at the weighty volume. Too many types of tobacco ash to memorize. I should look upon it with affection, but the self published monograph in which two hundred and forty different kinds of smoker's residue are innumerated only brings me a strange resentment.

I shut the book with a sharp snap. Dust rises from the pages. Sneezing, I stand up stiffly from the chair and stretch, spine protesting with a series of painful pops. Apparently I've been sitting here for longer than I thought. It's almost midnight.

Outside, the sky is black and almost two dimensional from a lack of stars. I see a faint sliver of moonlight up in the corner of the topmost window pane. The alabaster glow bathes the street below in a wan light, coaxing up shadows where they wouldn't normally exist. It looks unsettling. Sighing once more, I turn away and replace the book back on the shelf, wedging it between two others and then burying it behind them where I won't be able to find it again.

Sleep doesn't really seem like an option. I feel too awake, absorbed by the sound of the clock. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Mrs. Hudson is somewhere downstairs, awake as well. I could go talk to her.

I shake my head. No. I'm not in the mood for conversation.

I take a moment to study the room. It's clean, a bit too orderly, everything where it should be and yet should not. I tidied it up just last week, unwillingly convinced by Mrs. Hudson's pleading. She told me I didn't deserve to live in such a state of decay. She was exaggerating, of course, but I understood what she meant. Over and gone. Three years. Time to move on.

For a few minutes longer I stand there, eyes wandering aimlessly from one feature of the flat to the next, when I hear a noise come from downstairs. Suddenly alert, I tilt my head to the side and listen carefully. It sounded like a door slamming.

Had Mrs. Hudson gone out? I wonder. Where would she go at twelve o'clock am?

In the span of a second I am at the door. For some unknown reason alarm had begun to prickle at my fingertips. Slowly, I ease down the handle of the door to the flat and pry it open just an inch. I peer around the frame only to step back with wide, startled eyes.

"Mrs. Hudson!" I exclaim in a strained whisper.

She is standing there at the door, staring at me in slight panic.

"Someone's down there," she announces, pointing a finger into the hall below.

I pause to listen once more. A faint racket echoes, a rustling, hissing sort of noise, like someone sliding along the floor. Then comes a dim thump, and silence.

We look at each other. In wordless assent I disappear into the flat and return with my revolver.

"I'll go check," I say. She nods and lets me pass.

I move quietly down the stairs, handgun clasped securely in my left hand. This doesn't sound like a peculiar midnight visitor, it sounds like a break-in.

On the twelfth step I swivel around to gaze up at Mrs. Hudson. She's hovering around the corner, peering at me anxiously. "Get them," is all she says in a determined whisper. I only shake my head in sudden affection, amused at her ferocity.

Clutching the gun tighter, I turn back to peer into the darkness enveloping the hall below. Shadows murmur and curl in the corners, obscuring my vision. There is only the faint imprint of moonlight spilling through the crack underneath the door to go by.

Boldly I cross the remaining steps and alight softly into the hallway. My pulse is steady, fixed automatically into place from years of training. I carefully search in the gloom for whatever intruder has dared to pass through the door, relying on the impact and power of surprise rather than a furious, indignant demand of who's there?

That's when I see him.

He lies there motionless. In the dim lighting I make out the familiar shape of his form: lean and gangly from head to foot, austere, sharp, angular. He's sprawled out on the floor, every limb positioned at an awkward angle. An eerie, vacant stillness surrounds him, like something you would sense in the air around the body of the deceased at a funeral wake. He's clad in the same coat. The same scarf. Even in the darkness I can see those black curls tumbling off his forehead, always perfectly tousled no matter what he did, a fact he loved to irritate me with.

A wave of caustic nostalgia hits me. The gun slips loosely from my fingers and clatters to the floor with a certain deafening finality, as if marking the beginning of something, or the ending. I find that the hallway and the floor beneath me no longer exist. It's just me and the ghost. His ghost. A hallucination meant to torment.

There is a sound in the near distance as if someone is pounding on the front door. I try to shut it out until I realize it's my own heartbeat throbbing in my ears. Another sound follows quickly after, a short, piercing scream. It's Mrs. Hudson, racing down the stairs behind me.

"John!" she shouts. "John, that can't be him. Is it? Is it really him?"

I turn to her, confused. How could she be privy to the phantom generated from my thoughts alone? I continue to stare at her, flustered, until she grabs my arm and gently spins me around.

"Look, John!" she says, half bewildered, half awed. "Isn't that him?"

I look. Again I see him collapsed on the floorboards. I want to look away but I force myself to stare, suspicion and disbelief wavering into something new. Hope? Concern? Uncertainty?

Vigilant, I take two steps forward. My knees appear to bend of their own accord and then I'm kneeling on the floor.

With a shaky finger, I reach out and prod, none too gently, his left shoulder. The poke elicits a sharp intake of breath. He feels solid. Too solid for a ghost. Too absolute for an illusion.

Unless I never woke up this morning, and this whole thing is a dream. But I doubt that. The sensible soldier in me tells me I've never been more aware of anything.

"It's him," Mrs. Hudson whispers. "How is that possible?"

Her words jar my thoughts into action. How is it possible? If this is real - and the more I consider him, the more I know it is - how is he alive? Why is he here, now, of all times and places?

I gaze up at the landlady behind me. She's standing close, trembling, excited and afraid. I wish I could mirror her, but I am too dumbstruck to do anything other than glance back at the detective lying before me.

His eyes are open.

He looks up at me. Takes me in: the way my frame is practically paralyzed; my shocked and astounded expression, the bitter and betrayed tightening of my lips, the detested trembling in my hands I can't stop; the calculating and tumultuous spark in my eyes which seem to fly over him everywhere at once, again and again. It's hours before he speaks. It's years. It is a lifetime of waiting and agony and thinking only Oh God, what's happening, what's happening happening happening happening...

With a strangled little huff of air, he leans his head back down on the wooden boards of the foyer and closes his eyes. Mrs. Hudson makes some sort of choked noise behind me but I'm too focused on him to pay any attention.

"John?" he whispers.

I want to revel in the simple sound of my own name, but I can't. For some reason, I can't. Something like elation or maybe distress courses through me, but that doesn't make sense because I'm already so distressed; it must be something else.

I want to answer him. I could spend years answering him. Regrets and promises and questions pile up on my tongue like a car accident. Yet I don't trust my voice right now, so I turn to Mrs. Hudson. "Go get the medical kit from upstairs," I order, the doctor in me asserting themselves.

She nods, makes the noise again, and clatters up the stairs.

"John?"

I lean over him, wiping away the blood trickling down his face with the hem of my sleeve. I could care less if the clothing's ruined. He opens his eyes again at the tentative touch. They flicker about aimlessly, wildly, before settling on me.

He says it again: "John."

An slap or some insulting proclamation of blasphemy couldn't have hurt more. Why, I don't know.

Clearing my throat, I drudge up the courage to answer.

"Yes?"

I feel like it's a stupid answer. A lame one, the reply of a dumbstruck simpleton. But that singular word seems to become some kind of catalyst. His breathing races shallow in his chest for a few moments before he calms down, hands clenching and unclenching weakly at his sides. His gaze never leaves my face.

"You're...You're John, right?" he rasps. Those four words appear to take a monumental effort for him to say.

I sit back, perplexed. "Of course I am," I say, furrowing my brow. "I'm...I've..."

He tilts his chin down in the tiniest of nods. "Good," he breathes. "That's good." Then his eyelids flutter shut once more, and from the way his head slumps to the side, figure dissolving into limpness, I know he's fallen unconscious.

I don't hear Mrs. Hudson return down the stairs. Don't feel her shove the medical kit into my hands. I patch him up and categorize his injuries (cracked rib, mild blow to the head above his left ear with a blunt instrument, twisted ankle, black eye) with the absent minded determination of an army doctor going through another routine on a random individual; it is a zone I fall into where I forget my surroundings entirely. I don't feel the strain on my limbs as we, somehow, manage to carry him up the stairs and onto the couch in the flat. And I am not aware of anything as I sit here in the armchair, chin resting in my hand, watching as Mrs. Hudson shuffles to and fro, busying herself in making tea, her chatter rising like a tempest in the background while I curl up in an attempt to make myself small. I can't think. I can't look at him, slung unaware across the sofa, bedraggled and dirty and with blood drying on his face.

Perhaps it's the shock. Possibly it's because I cannot comprehend what's going on. However much I try to tell myself otherwise, though, I know looking at the situation along those lines is a lie. A lie I want to wither inside like a dying flower on the last warm eve of summer, gone too long without rain.

Because I know.

I knew, invariably, from the first time he spoke. I knew from the emptiness in his eye, the colorless planes of his face, barren and blank, drained of the animation and deserted of the powerful sentiment they used to carry. It was there all along; I just didn't want to acknowledge it.

His mind has forsaken him. God, that mind, reduced to nothing! He doesn't remember. Everything, anything, nothing at all.

Is it temporary? I wonder. Is he just so dazed he can't recall me? Will he wake up and explain why he's been away for so long, why he's not dead?

I don't know.

And for the complicated rapture I feel at his return, for all the complex shards of longing and grief and hollow bitterness sinking into my bones, twisting together my veins, breaking my body apart, for all of the wondering as to what's going to happen tomorrow, I still can't help but think to myself:

Maybe...maybe he hasn't really come back at all.


	3. Part Three

_"You knew? You knew?"_

_My words are abnormally loud. Then again, I'm standing in the middle of the Diogenes Club, and not necessarily inside the Stranger's Room. The slightest whisper in a place like this comes across as a tempest. Mycroft stares up at me, unabashed, from the armchair he's seated in. He looks at ease. Too comfortable for this kind of conversation. I've given no other indication to what I mean other than those four words, yet he knows exactly what I'm talking about._

_"John," he intones in a low, listless voice, casting a furtive glance to his left where other various unsociable gentlemen are seated, browsing through newspapers and politely ignoring one another. "Don't you think we should discuss this elsewhere?"_

_I clench my fists at my sides. His composure irritates me. It always has. He is the master of the objective viewpoint, observing every situation with an impartial and unemotional perspective. I suppose that's where we differ the most: I am a soldier at heart, steadfast but with a tendency to act, while he and his lack of ambition prefer to sit back and advise._

_"Should we?" I find myself saying sarcastically. "Will they throw us out?" I instantly regret the angry retort. They probably will toss us out. The rules border on bizarre here._

_Mycroft sets the book previously balanced on his knees on the table beside his chair. "Perhaps," he says with a shrug of his shoulders. "To be on the safe side, let us continue this in a less, ah...public place."_

_He rises from the armchair, slowly, and walks with a leisurely pace to a door in the far corner. I follow behind, noticing how despite our unusual confrontation, no one is looking at is. I almost wish they would, so I would have something else to focus on. My eyes dart aimlessly about the extensively orante room until we finally pass through into a much smaller side office. He closes the door behind us._

_"Now," he says, turning to me. "You were saying?"_

_An indignant response rises up in me - I'm expecting to hear mockery or ridicule in his voice - but after a long examination of his expression, I bite it back. He is studying me with neither contempt nor scorn, but rather with a strange sort of...kindness._

_I gaze back, puzzled by the sudden softness in his eyes. He doesn't smile, but continues to watch me, waiting for an answer._

_I quirk an eyebrow. "You knew. This entire time, you knew."_

_He nods his head in assent. His calm demeanor may irritate me, but I don't dislike him for it. In some ways, I respect it. Envy it. We're each calm in our own distinct ways, of course, but on separate battlefields._

_"I take this to mean he has returned, then?" he asks._

_"You didn't know?"_

_"No. He did not tell me." He wanders over to the mahogany desk in the center of the floor and glances down at it. "What has he told you of it all so far?"_

_"Nothing," I remark bitterly, "because he doesn't remember."_

_Mycroft's eyes are on me in an instant, what gentleness that lingered in his face gone._

_"What do you mean, doesn't remember?"_

_"He doesn't know me," I say, bewildered. I honestly thought Mycroft had known everything, and due to reasons of his own, had decided to keep away from the flat. But the longer I take in his tightened visage, the severe and serious set to his clenched jaw, the more I confirm he was just as unaware of that fact as I was._

_"He doesn't recall anything. Only his name, and for some reason, mine. Yet nothing about the flat, or what he does, or where he's been the past three years."_

_Mycroft's shoulders tense. "Explain," he tells me tersely._

_I hold up my palms as a sign of surrender. "There's not much to tell. Two days ago he appeared at our, my, flat on Baker Street at midnight. He was a little battered, but otherwise intact. Yesterday he woke and hasn't been able to recall anything, only that he believes he's supposed to be here for some reason."_

_I am glad for once again that Mycroft is so logical and intent, for he doesn't ask me to elaborate. Instead he just nods once more, taking in the information as coolly as if he had just been told the state of the weather._

_"How did you discover I knew about him this whole time?" he inquires, tone steady and strict. "Not giving into spying, are we?"_

_"No. A letter fell out of his coat pocket this morning, a response from you to something he had written earlier. It was dated two years ago."_

_"Hmm." He moves around the desk. "I never knew him to be sentimental in the aspect of keepsakes, even as a child."_

_"This is not about sentiment," I say, my fingernails biting inflamed half moons into my palms. "Why didn't you tell me?"_

_"Because, John Watson. It was for your own good."_

_I force a laugh. "Really?"_

_"Yes. He'll have to explain it to you."_

_"If he ever can."_

_Mycroft circles to face me. Something akin to anger lingers briefly in his glance, and then it dissipates. His speech grows soft once more. "If anything, this is all about sentiment," he says. "I can see you have not reacted well to his return. Perhaps you were hoping he would come back the same individual you parted with three years ago. Right?"_

_The knowledge that the elder brother could sometimes make more brilliant deductions than his younger sibling passes through my mind. The thought he might be browsing through the inner workings of my conscious unnerves me. Still, I agree. "Yes. Of course. Weren't you?"_

_Ignoring the question, he traces a line in the mahogany wood of the desk with one neatly trimmed fingernail. "I kept in contact with him for the first two and a half years. He notified me a few months after the... We responded back and forth through letters, though he never gave a return address. Six months ago, he stopped communicating with me. Now what could have happened?"_

_"I don't know," I admit. "I came here hoping you could tell me."_

_"I, unfortunately, cannot begin to fathom. However, I'll stop by and judge it all for myself in a few days."_

_"Why a few?"_

_"His memories may have come back by then, rendering a visit unnecessary. I imagine anyone would not take comfortably to meeting a stranger who claims he's related. I'd rather avoid a lengthy, awkward explanation."_

_Only later do these words occur to me as a deflection._

_"Fine." I cross my arms. It seems like there's nothing else I can say to him. All the fight has gone out of me, expelled from my skin, and I feel hollow. "Should we go see someone?"_

"A psychologist?" He clicks his tongue. "No. Not necessary. Let him be. He'll grow better with time, I'm certain. And even in this state you'd be hard pressed to convince him to see one.

_"But." He fixes me with an unwavering stare. "Treat the situation fairly, Dr. Watson."_

I turn away from the window, the memory disappearing into the back of my mind like August wind sweeping away the scents of Summer: effortlessly, finishing before one realizes it. I feel confused as Summer must, morphed into something new without having gave permission. Does he feel like that too? I look down at my arms. Next I'll wither into Autumn leaves, and then die frostbitten from Winter. Brittle bones, frozen muscles, iced over eyes.

It's been three weeks now, and Mycroft has still not visited. Everyone else has: Lestrade, Molly, even Sally Donovan. He does not recognize any of them. He progresses the same, accustoming himself with his surroundings at a fast rate. In some ways he is exactly how he used to be, sharp in manner and observations, witty, irregular in his habits, clear in explaining things and analytical to a fault. His mind is still teeming with knowledge; he's made his way through half the bookshelf now. Yet everything is still foreign. There are times when I see him gazing hard at something, and I believe he's on the verge of summoning something back once forgotten. Then it fades. He makes no demands for himself, no complaints. Sometimes I have to wonder what's keeping him here, in 221B, if he sees us all as strangers.

Sometimes I think he's as wary of me as I am of him. We are like two magnets with the same negative charge, circling each other, neither wanting to get too close lest we accidentally connect. I can see it in his face when he looks at me. I must be as much of a stranger to him as he is to me. Except not entirely, because I remember him the way he was before. He doesn't really know anything about me at all.

We do talk. He questions me, I question him. Never about anything important. We discuss books or the news or philosophy. He doesn't ask about himself. That, I know, is a part of him that definitely remained the past three years. He's still unwilling to ask for help, so immersed in pride and the desire to figure it all out for himself. The thought reassures me. He's determined, stubborn enough to do it.

No one has let him know yet that he faked his death. No one has told him he used to be a detective. If he's discovered it on his own he hasn't said anything. And if there are potential clients out there aware of his return and needing his assistance, they stay away. Maybe Lestrade told them. If so, I owe him.

I'm sitting on the couch in the living room that night, he standing by the window plucking aimlessly at the strings of his violin, when I ask him the question that's been circling through my head all day.

"What's it like?"

He turns to look at me and the sharp, discordant notes under his fingers die. If he were anyone else, the next logical question would be what's what like? Yet despite whatever he's been through I know part of him still retains the ability to understand the unspoken: what's it like in that funny odd head nowadays?

He humors me anyways.

"What do you mean?"

With a raised eyebrow he studies me. I begin to automatically feel slightly self conscious beneath that glare, until I realize it's mostly empty. He swivels back to gaze out the window and I glance down at my shoes so he cannot see my apprehension.

The sunset outside is beautiful, casting rays of amber and pale pink through the window, setting the living room aflame. The brilliance of the light sings, but I'm too deaf to hear it.

"You know very well," I say. Am I intruding on his privacy? No, not really. I have a right to make sense of this, too, and he knows it.

After a few fleeting moments, he nods. He sets the violin down in his armchair, carefully, his eyes roving over it with a mixture of fondness and unfamiliarity, a parent relinquishing a newborn child they have not yet had time to become acquainted with.

"It's like," he begins, then pauses. I wait patiently, taking in the jeans he wears, the heather blue t-shirt, the stray curl falling haphazardly into his eye. The clothes look bizarre on him; another person's normal. "Attempting to remember...to distinguish it all, to interpret it...it's like walking underwater."

Shrugging, he strolls across the room and takes a seat on the couch beside me. There is a glint of something akin to misery or doubt lingering in his voice. "Does that make sense?"

Misery. Doubt. Another man's emotions.

He's staring at me again. I tilt my head and picture him trying to walk underwater: arms reaching slowly out, legs churning up sand but getting nowhere, panicked body silhouetted in the unearthly blue-green glow of weak atrophied sunlight broken apart as it falls through in wavy sheets, permeating the ocean from above. Yes. It's an accurate description. He is a ghost beneath the sea, running in place, suspended indefinitely while fish and fragments of colorful coral pass him by, oblivious to the last of the air bubbles slipping out of his mouth.

I get the urge to say something. Do something to comfort him or convince him he's not entirely lost. I can help, I could say. Just ask. But I don't, because my mind ridicules he's not the same person I used to know, and I'm afraid to reach out and place a consoling hand on his shoulder even if it's what he needs most. Maybe because I think if I do, he won't be solid: he'll vanish under my touch. I'm afraid he'll turn out to be another ghost. I'm afraid of coming to terms with how he's changed, what might have happened, and how to deal with the consequences.

I get up and walk away, out the door, into the night.

In some aspects, I an unforgivably selfish.


	4. Part Four

The first thing he says when he arrives is, "Do you recognize me?"

It is the only indication he's given so far to any type of feeling he must have at the return of his younger sibling. It's spoken with control, in the same listless manner in which he says everything. Yet beneath it I hear, or at least convince myself I do, a flurry of words gone unsaid waiting to tumble out, struggling against the dam. He is the epitome of restraint. Three years, and he stands there in the living room with his umbrella as if this is another social visit to another various acquaintance.

I hate him for it.

_Three years? Three, and the gap between you and him is that wide? Three! _

But he is not that kind of person, even if, for some reason, I want him to be at this moment. And I get the feeling he's been waiting to say those words for a long, long time, so I let my anger go.

He's dressed immaculately, as always. He stands there in the center of the room, watching his brother with an expression I cannot discern. He looks bored, but I know he's not. An interested light gleams subtly in his eyes as he surveys the flat for a moment before turning his attention back to Sherlock.

"Well?"

Sherlock has not even glanced up from the sheet of partially written music in his lap. He's begun composing again, slowly, an artist deprived of his art coming back to it after a long and confusing separation. All of the songs have a melancholy feel, performed with an absent and distracted air by fingers plucking at the strings, as there's still no bow.

The silence stretches. After a minute, Mycroft quirks an eyebrow and stares at me pointedly.

"Sherlock," I hiss. "Stop ignoring him."

When he looks up I know he was doing just that. As to the reasons why, I can't decide.

We both turn our gaze to the man in the dark suit. It's taken three and a half weeks for him to come, even after I visited the Diogenes Club. I have to think that perhaps he's just so busy this was the only time he could get away. Most likely that's the truth, but I get the impression there are other meanings behind his absence.

Sherlock scrutinizes him for what seems like hours, even though it's only really a few seconds. I follow his line of vision, trailing over Mycroft's face, grazing his shoes, his hands, the umbrella propped at an angle against the floor. He takes him in silently, still the observer who can get so easily lost in his observations. I wonder fleetingly if he had even heard Mycroft's question, but then he speaks, and my shoulders fall:

"No."

I'm not sure what I'm expecting - rage, a somber plea, a vocalized calculated assessment of the human mind's inner functions. I am not familiar enough with Mycroft to be able to guess what his reactions will be before they happen. Briefly I wonder if anyone is. Out of the two siblings, sometimes I believe he is the most difficult to figure out. A man with no ambition, regardless of intelligence, position or influence, rarely has intentions that are visible to the eyes of others.

"Nothing at all?" Mycroft asks airily. "Think. You're ever so good at it."

I watch him thoughtfully. The two are staring at each other, Mycroft with the cynical, unamused expression he normally carries and that distracted spark in his eyes like he has something more important on his mind, Sherlock with a cold, intrepid sort of smile, but not a smile borne out of any measure of cheer. How long they stare, I cannot say. I lose track of time, immersed in flicking back and forth from one brother to the other, a sickening feeling settling in my stomach.

Sherlock is the first to break the silence.

"The British government," he says.

Surprise, if he is capable of being surprised, sparks on Mycroft's face, and hope flickers in the back of my mind.

"Would you mind elaborating?" he asks in an eloquent drawl. Again, I envy the way he's so collected. Beneath the coolness in his voice, though, I have to wonder if something else is brewing.

"You work for the government," he says. "And you provide intelligence on a freelance basis for other organizations. Coffee drinker, unmarried, power complex." Then he holds a palm to his forehead and averts his eyes with tight lips.

I know that look: how did I know that information?

"Correct," Mycroft says. I almost expect him to applaud, so dry is his tone. "Anything else?"

He hesitates. I can almost visualize the complicated algorithm running through his head, the process of grasping at threads which unravel to reveal no answers, sorting what little knowledge he has and eliminating what does not fit. I see little pieces of light - fragments coming up unexpectedly like fireflies in the darkness.

"No," he says, and the light disappears.

Mycroft sighs. It's a heavy, shuddering sort of sigh, too deep for someone of his temperament. He taps his umbrella on the floor.

"Well, Doctor Watson," he says, turning to me. "I told you I would come and view the situation for myself."

I nod apprehensively.

"And so I have. If I cannot coax up any sort of memory, and you, the person who was undoubtedly closest to him cannot, then I honestly don't know what we're going to do."

Something in me sinks. I hadn't realized up until this point that part of me was hoping Mycroft would be the one to figure it all out. But if the very sight and sound of his brother couldn't drudge up even the faintest memory other than obscure facts derived from simple observation...

"Hold on," Sherlock interrupts. "Who are you? Did I know you?"

Mycroft ignores him, and I hate him even more for that, too. He reaches into his coat and pulls out a tiny photo album, the light blue case cracked from the wear of time.

"Let him look through this," he says. "It may, ah, help."

He places it on the coffee table then spins around and heads for the door, his pace as languid as ever, umbrella tapping out his steps. I don't call after him. Sherlock doesn't either.

"John?" he asks when Mycroft disappears down the stairs. "Did I know him?"

I find I can't bring myself to answer. Why?

Struck with a sudden urge, I stroll purposefully across the room and glance out the window. Down below I see Mycroft emerge out onto the sidewalk, swinging his umbrella around carelessly. I expect him to wave for a cab. But a dark car pulls up and I remember just exactly who he is.

In the seconds before he steps gracefully into the vehicle, I see it - a tiny twitch of his fingers, a subtle quivering of his lips. I understand, then, his need for detachment, his impassive reactions, his emotional paralysis.

As the car drives away, I know I've been witness to someone about to break down.

I worry about him. Constantly.

I turn back to him, standing there behind me. "Let's go for a walk," I say.

He looks solemn. Neither of us glance towards the photo album.

"Why?"

"Let's just go."

We wind through London streets as the afternoon sun begins to descend over the city skyline in the distance. It's far too warm for coats, yet he wears his anyways, scarf tucked a little looser than he used to wear it around his neck.

"Isn't that a little uncomfortable?" I ask, indicating his clothing.

"A little," he admits.

"Then why are you wearing it?"

"Because I always do."

He halts in the center of the sidewalk for just a moment, like he wasn't aware those words had come out of his mouth until after he said them.

I stop beside him.

"What?"

"I'm... never mind. It's nothing important." He sounds irritated, as if he was on the brink of discovering something and it was yanked from his grasp all too quickly. Abruptly he continues walking, and after a second of staring after him in puzzled silence, gauging his reaction, I follow.

We stroll onward like this for a while, relaxed and each absorbed in our own thoughts, a respectful distance between us, a stranger and a stranger he knows but who doesn't know him. It's not the first time we've been out walking through London. Within the first few days I cajoled him to take a walk through some of the streets nearby, to see if perhaps anything would strike him as familiar. It didn't. But looking over at him, I see he has the same glint in his eye he always carries whenever he observes the city around us, an appreciation for the strange, severe and unlikely beauty London presents. He used to carry that look back then, tool. It gives me a feeble hope.

I notice him looking at me. Quickly I avert my eyes, and then decide I've been doing that too much lately. I stare back.

He slows. Stops altogether. I pause too, and then we're standing there beside a pub in the fading light from which the jangle of discordant music echoes through the doors. We are two statues contemplating one another unabashed, fully and out in the open for what I suppose is the first actual time.

"I'm sorry," he says.

I flinch, startled. The only time I recall he's ever apologized for anything was during the case at Baskerville. Even then, his apology was indirect. Has he ever said these words before? Why now?

"What for?" I ask. I can feel my spine tensing, my nerves on guard once more.

He shrugs. The movement seems too casual for what follows. "For not being who you want me to be. Who anyone wants me to be these days."

"That's ridiculous," I stutter. "It's not your fault. You can't help it if you don't remember."

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I falter. It's not his fault. It was never his fault. He is still the same individual within, and yet I've been treating him this whole time like...like... I swallow. It's unfair. I've been so unfair, choked up in my own useless, senseless, bloody stupid emotions that I haven't given the time to pause and think about how he's handling all of this. About how he must feel in response to how we all walk around him treading on eggshells, someone to fear and revere for mixed reasons.

I remember Mycroft's words: treat the situation fairly. Up until now, I hadn't understood what he meant.

I look up at him. If we had switched places, would he be treating me the same way? Not getting too close, not allowing me to go too far away, unsure how to fix the situation but afraid to try because he doesn't want to confirm it might be irreparable?

Guilt washes through me. I stagger under the weight, knees bending. His arms shoot out and he quickly pulls me up again. I want to tell him, tell what a terrible person I've been, how remorseful I am, how I've been so dumbstruck at his return this past month I haven't really been able to think clearly at all.

But I see it in his expression. He knows already.

"It's okay," he says quietly. There is none of the usual detachment in his tone. "You haven't been able to help it. It's excusable. This-" here he bites down on the word, "this Sherlock you knew before, he's still here. Somewhere. We'll find him."

I jerk away, almost wishing he would have said anything else. Arguing would be somehow easier to take than this calm front. I want him to be angry. He should be furious with me the way I am (perhaps then my sudden self loathing would be easier to handle).

But he's not. I open my mouth to speak, then close it again. Where did the English language go?

"It's not okay," I tell him. "I've been treating you like-"

"Like in a way that is not unusual to me, because I don't know how you treated me before, and therefore I have nothing to compare it to. It's alright. I'm not angry. It's understandable. The only thing I'm angry about is that I can't remember."

It's quite possibly the longest string of words he's said since he got back. Music from the pub fills the sudden silence. I get the sense of something beginning, or ending, or continuing. I don't know anymore.

I don't know, I don't know. I've thought that a lot lately. Perhaps it's time to know.

Even if knowing hurts.

It hits me then. I realize the most important tool which could help him remember, the thing that could be the final catalyst to his recovery, is me. Because I knew him best, as much as anyone ever could have. I know him still. I refuse to acknowledge the fact he might never really come back. Up until now I've been withholding a well of information, and I'm not going to yield to a lack of bravery any more.

So I talk. I tell him how he used to be a detective. I tell him about his cases, and how I blogged about them and he detested the way I told them because he said I wrote from an emotional viewpoint and romanticised the whole procedure, thus eliminating the importance of the facts. I tell him about that night in the hollow at Baskerville, about the deerstalker cap, about Irene. I tell him he was nearly impossible to deal with and we quarreled over everything. We discuss how he never bought the groceries. I let him know he was arrogant and complicated and I hated him most of the time, but at the end of the day I always found he was the individual I could trust the most. We stand there talking until the moon grows bright and countless people going in and out of the pub pass us by, two oddities shivering in the cold, laughing and frowning and glaring in equal measure.

I don't tell him about Moriarty.

When I run out of things to say and close my mouth and look away, by some unsaid agreement we begin walking home. When we get there, he sits down and picks up the photo album. He begins to browse through it page by page, examining with care each photograph preserved safely behind slips of yellowed plastic, his gaze lingering on some, his fingertips on others. We sit there withholding words, because for once we don't feel like strangers anymore.

Because before this, I did not know so much could be said with silence.


	5. Part Five

"Incorrect."

"How could it possibly be incorrect?"

"Because it makes absolutely no sense."

"It's in the rules."

"It's illogical."

"It's only a game."

"In the parameters of a real life situation, it would be illogical."

"Well this is obviously not a real life situation."

"It's still wrong."

"So you're telling me that even though the card proves it's right, it's wrong. The game's lying to us."

"What else could it be?"

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

"Do you have a better explanation?"

"Well, n-"

"Don't make accusations if you can't back them up."

"Can you back your accusation up?"

"Of course. Would you like me to?"

"Oh, God. No."

I sigh and place my cards face down, trying to stifle the smile flickering at the edges of my mouth despite my irritation. He's gazing steadily across at me, his cards held in a careless fashion with only two fingers. Part of me suspects he's wishing those cards were a cigarette, but Mrs. Hudson and I still haven't allowed him to touch a single one since he returned. He loathes us for it sometimes. I relish the familiarity of that loathing.

"Then explain how it was the rope," he tells me, glancing down to study the gameboard.

"How should I know? The weapon was only picked by random selection. If I check to make sure it was, the game will be ruined. Then again, it's already sort of ruined..."

He shakes his head as if he hasn't heard me at all. "Why did I bother to play this?"

"I have no idea."

I try not to laugh as he places his cards down and pushes away from the table. He flops down on the couch with an exasperated, disdainful sigh. I pack up the game and put it somewhere he won't be able to find it again, so this particular cycle of events won't be repeated: curiosity at the game, a personal undertaking to prove it wrong, and then finally animosity and disgust at how the rules do not bend to his liking.

Nothing is ever to his liking recently. I relish the familiarity of that, too.

It's been three months now. For the most part, things have descended into a routine, a type of normalcy that's as close as it ever will get to how it once was. An irregular routine, of course, as he's still a man of varying and disconnected habits. They shouldn't really be called habits at all. Pieces of his personality and social tendencies are coming back, slowly, and often without him realizing it. He'll say or do something and then pause as if another individual had just spoken or acted for him, another consciousness asserting itself, and then ask me to confirm something about him he doesn't recall.

"Was I rude?" he'll say for instance, often with a distracted frown.

"Yes," I'll answer back unblinkingly, keeping my promise not to lie to him any longer. He'll nod and leave it at that, satisfied.

Despite that promise, I still haven't properly answered his original question, the one which still lingers whenever he glances at me: Did you miss me, John Watson? Did you miss me?

What could I have said? How would he have replied?

I've yet to figure out.

With a yawn, I stand up from the chair and stretch. He still hasn't moved from the sofa even though he landed at an uncomfortable looking angle. His blue dressing gown is twisted around his ankles, and he's staring up at the ceiling like he hopes something will catch on fire soon to alleviate his boredom.

I take a seat in the little space left and shove his feet away to make more room.

"There are other places to sit, John," he declares crossly.

"Yes, but I just so happened to choose this one," I say.

"It's taken."

"Not anymore."

He sighs testily, but curls his knees up anyways.

We sit in peace for a little while, occupied in our own random reflections and waking consciousnesses. Morning sun spills through the curtains. I let my eyes wander, content, until they come upon the violin propped up next to the fireplace. A bow, newly purchased by me, sits next to it. I did break the first one, after all.

"How's the composing coming?" I ask. He's been writing something furiously for the past few days. Sheets litter one of the armchairs, piled on top of each other, some complete and the others containing only a few scribbled notes.

"Good," he says. He leans up into a sitting position and rests the back of his head against the tortured wall. "Why?"

"I'm just wondering."

"From what I've seen, you never 'just wonder'," he says, not unkindly.

I sigh. "Well, it's just that I noticed what it was called."

"Which is?"

"Walking Underwater."

"And?"

"Is it about-"

"Obviously."

He's watching me with an incomprehensible expression. I say nothing more, keeping my thoughts to myself while his struggles to remember lie just across the room in the form of eighth notes and complicated looking measures lacking lyrics.

I get that feeling, the sense I've had so many times since he came back, that he wants to tell me something. But whatever it is, he keeps it to himself, too, and turns away. We lapse into silence again.

Now that I consider it, all of this isn't so much a routine as it is a facsimile of one. There are still pieces left to pick up, holes I don't know how to fill, awkward gaps in our conversations like now which whisper of things we've yet to say to one another because even if we're blunt we don't know where to begin. But we talk more; that night where we spent hours discussing everything and nothing about his forgotten life changed something. Nowadays, I find little fear in hearing him speak, in seeing him come around the corner. I know now it's okay to befriend him again, this version who is a mixture of old and new. He's not going to disappear.

Periodically, I'll dream that he does. I never tell him. I think he knows anyways.

"You'll have to tell me one day how you do that," I say, bringing back up the topic.

"Compose music?"

"Tell stories through music."

He frowns. "I could teach you to play."

"Really?"

"Why not? Although you're naturally not dispositioned to have a talent with music, so you'll likely be horrible at it."

"How kind," I mutter.

"But I can try anyways."

I gaze over at him and see the tiniest of smiles flickering on his face.

"Does Mycroft play?" I ask, and then instantly regret it. How would he know? Carefully I observe him, but he only shrugs his shoulders.

"I believe that...Mycroft..." he pauses, the word tasting strange on his tongue, "could compose a whole symphony if he wanted to. Yet you told me he has no ambition, correct?"

"Right."

"I guessed. It's easy to see."

Mycroft came around once more, a few days ago. The two sat and spoke for hours. I was curious to hear their conversation, but out of respect I left and let them talk privately. All that Mycroft could tell him must have been said, though I did not ask. He seems more certain now, doesn't wander absently about the flat as if he's lost, behind the mirror looking out on some reverse dimension he used to know. I wonder if their relationship will stay the same as it once was, strained, distant and competitive, a constant game of chess. I don't think it will. I hope it won't, and become one good thing out of the other few to come out of this.

"What else is easy to see?" I say, surprised at the question. I wonder if I should elaborate, but he knows what I mean.

"People. Circumstances. Relationships."

Hope lances through me painfully. That's how it used to be, I think.

As if he had heard me, he says quietly, "It's been that way since I came back, as far as I can remember up until those three months ago. I see...things, I just have difficulty understanding their implications."

Not how it used to be.

"Not all the time. It's growing clearer."

"What do you..." I start to say, then stop. We're moving onto a topic of conversation which had seemed off limits before, in an obscure and unidentifiable way. This was uncharted territory. I hadn't dared to ask him before and I'm afraid to ask him now. It's the last thing I've yet to discover, the only remaining part of the inevitable left to confirm. Up to this point, a single spark has remained, the belief this can't really be true, can't really be happening, I'll wake up tomorrow to the sound of gunshots at the wall and a chemical experiment simmering on the kitchen counter.

It's idiotic, useless, a sentiment too deep and yet fragile in contrast for someone used to the numbness of Afghanistan battlefields.

Maybe I'm ridiculous that way.

He keeps his gaze aimed at the other side of the room, staring into the empty fireplace. After a brief pause, my tension dissolves into patience, and we sit there yet again in quiet, though the lull teems with unspoken words.

I'm not sure how how long I wait, but eventually he stirs, and shifts to look at me.

"John?"

I blink. "Yes?"

"I've never had trouble recalling you."

"What?"

He sighs heavily, as if having to explain something easily apparent to a small child, but I sense a halting indecision in his tone. "You," he says slowly. "I can't describe it exactly, but you were what drew me here, to Baker Street, in a sense. Though the past three years remain empty and the years before that a disconnected blur, you've remained a beacon, perhaps, the only familiar piece in this fractured puzzle. I can't remember how I got here, only that I needed to be because of you. You're a stranger I've never met, but I've always known you."

I regard his words carefully, struck at the uncharacteristic honesty and raw, blunt sentiment, and then a slow, helpless smile spreads across my face. "That makes no sense."

"I figured," he grumbles, but he's smiling, too.

The tension fades. I begin to realize that this is a conversation which we'll have to have over the next few months continuously, each time uncovering something new or discussing the same problems as before. It is an issue which will not be solved overnight. This is going to take time, and effort, and more empathy than I believe we are both used to sharing. But it's worth it. Despite his eccentricities and how much he annoys me, his tendencies to insult everyone within a five mile radius and the way he considers the freezer as a storage for corpses, he's always been worth it.

Perhaps we'll never know what happened. Do we even need to? I suppose, in the end, it doesn't really matter anyways. He's here, and alive. I can help him remember, if he wants my assistance. I can help him forget. We can ease back into the life we once knew, or at least a proper fabrication of it. Well, maybe not. I'm through with pretending. He has changed, and by association, strangely, so have I. We're altered, whether for the worse or the better I haven't discovered yet. At least we're together.

His memories might have forsaken him, but I decide I will not do the same.

My phone rings.

Brow furrowed, I pull it out of my pocket and study the screen with some surprise. I have not heard from this number in a long, long while.

He studies me intently as I answer and listen to the speaker on the other end. After a moment, I move the phone away from my ear.

"Lestrade?" I ask.

He nods thoughtfully. "Yes. Visited two and a half months ago. Gray hair, Detective Inspector, no natural insight, too prone to seize the first solution which comes along and abandon the more likely probability."

I roll my eyes, but when I speak, my voice is wary and controlled.

"He says he has a case he would like some help with. Requires some help with, actually..."

He regards me for a long minute. I hear Lestrade's voice come through the phone, questioning and tinny in the background, but I ignore it for the sake of what expressions I can see dancing though his eyes like a rushing river. He's thinking, as always. But this decision is the biggest one he's had yet to make.

He never gives an answer, and sometimes I think it's because he never really had to, or he just did not have the words to say. Actions were enough. He strode into his bedroom, shut the door, and five minutes later came out properly dressed, dressing gown abandoned.

I watch in what might have been fascination and a building exhilaration as he walks over to the coat rack and plucks his dark wool jacket from the mix. When he turns, he has one eyebrow impatiently raised, a partial, annoyed frown on his lips.

"What are you standing around for? Are you coming or not?"

Grinning, I hold the phone back up.

"Lestrade? We'll be there in ten."

**So originally I intended for the story to end here, just because it seemed like a good place at the time. I never really meant for this to turn into anything more than a short story about the possibility of what could happen if our favorite detective came back without his memories. But now I'm not sure if I should add more chapters or not. I guess we'll see. Thanks for reading thus far!**


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